I was a coin collector as a kid. My grandfather got me started. I subscribed to Coin World, and read it every week. I belonged to The Kennedy Coin Club, where I where I met with other collectors to buy, sell, and trade.
I always had my Want/Have list in my wallet–a list of coins I needed to fill in gaps in my collection and duplicates I was willing to sell or trade.
I remember how much fun it was to go through my pocket change (or my father’s pockets) and find silver coins or rare coins from the past. Sometimes, I’d go to the bank and “buy” a bag of coins so I could go through it to find the one or two coins that were worthy of saving. I’d replace them in the bag and exchange it for a new one.
Collecting coins was a fun hobby. But eventually, there came a time when you could no longer find rare coins or silver coins in your change, and I stopped doing it. It wasn’t fun anymore.
You know what? That’s a good metric for everything in life. If it’s not fun, don’t do it.
If you don’t enjoy practicing law, do something about it. Change your practice area or your clients, get good at marketing, or go do something else.
I said as much in an interview I did yesterday for a podcast. “What’s one piece of advice you could share that we haven’t talked about,” I was asked at the end of the interview. “If it’s not fun, you’re not doing it right,” I said.
Of course it’s not all black or white. There’s lots of gray. You may not like networking, for example, but you love the results so you keep doing it. That’s actually a good way to look at it. Focus on what you like, not what you don’t like.
Don’t forget, everything is relative. Maybe you don’t like marketing, but you don’t like getting calls from bill collectors even less.
Find some aspect of what you’re doing that’s fun. Because otherwise, why do it?
